Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
In my previous post I wrote about wasteful competition that occurs between animals within the same species, including us humans. To try to be impressive, we do a lot of things that are relatively wasteful. We might spend hours and hours focusing on developing a single skill, some animals will spend lots of time building … Continue reading Norms and Productive Coordination
The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson suggests that our self-interest drives a lot more of our behavior than we would like to admit. No matter what we are doing or what we are up to, part of our brain is active in looking at how we can maximize the world … Continue reading The Price of Friendship
I have written in the past about the idea and model that our brains act as press secretaries, taking the information that comes into the mind and presenting it in a way that makes everything happening in the mind look as good as it possibly can. This idea comes back in Robin Hanson and Kevin … Continue reading Press Secretaries
What inputs drive what types of behaviors in humans? This is a question I think about at an incredibly basic level all the time, but that I don't really hear much insightful discussion about in general. We all like to believe we (and everyone else) is in complete conscious control of our thoughts, minds, and … Continue reading How to Describe a Norm
Ryan Holiday's book Ego is the Enemy helped me to better understand and recognize moments when I was allowing my ego to drive my behaviors and decision making. So much of our desires and motivations we hide from ourselves in an attempt to make ourselves feel better about who we are and what we do. … Continue reading Performances on Social Media
In my last post, I described the ways in which much of our life happens on auto-pilot in habitual decisions and actions that often don’t register with our conscious mind. Not everything we do needs to be a conscious action (think about how tired your brain would become if you had to focus on every … Continue reading Building Habits
When we think of ourselves and who we are as people, we can easily fall into a trap where the best parts of who we are standout and shine, while the worst parts of ourselves are hidden in the shadows where we are not able to recognize them. We are rational beings, and we are … Continue reading Self-Reflection and Seeing Your Place in the World
Without self-awareness I have found that it is easy to fall into a place where my actions do not hold to the values that I profess to live by. Even with self-awareness, I have found that there are still times where my actions fall short of what I think should be my ideal. Occasionally I … Continue reading Reflecting Your Inner Self